Chapter V

Very carefully did Miss Carrell justify her election. By courteous handling of the kitchen population, by preserving unprofaned her master's private hours, by consolidating the affection of the daughter of the family and the approval of the quieter Owen, she showed how straight was her eye, how cunning and steady her hand. But, like Miss Durgon before her, she had yet to make her metamorphosis complete; it was her policy to slough off for ever the nursery governess, and to put on the handsomer scales of the lady housekeeper. "School." The word popped about in her mind. "Boarding-school." The children were getting older. How insinuate into the minds of every one that they must soon go to school? Then she would enjoy the not unfashionable duties of purchasing their outfits, interviewing their principals, conveying them on the first day of term to the thresholds of their schools, and writing to them afterwards like a conscientious guardian.

She would do it through Daphne. Miss Carrell had read her pupil's character, in so far as a thing still amorphous had features to be read; and what she saw was this: the child's surging vitality, because no one was directing it to a selected field, would run down any channel that might be laid invitingly before it. There was the whole-hearted readiness to be masculine, just because half a dozen people had called her "tomboyish"; there was the whole-hearted readiness to fall in love with her governess, when the governess hinted that the gates were open. She was like a mass of rising water that, insecurely prisoned, had been making its own little channels, and would certainly, did Miss Carrell trench wisely, run down her new-chosen course.

So, on evenings after tea, when the dusk was in the school-room, Miss Carrell would read tales of school to the children, Daphne sitting on the floor at her knees, and Owen staring from his chair at the fire. It was difficult to secure enough of these "Stories for Girls." They read "Winifred of Greystones," "The Most Popular Girl in the Fourth Form," "Fanny the Prefect," and "The Tomboy of Tatterden House." And as Daphne's imagination breathed abounding life into Winifred of Greystones, Fanny the Prefect, and, above all, the fascinating Tomboy of Tatterden House, it was only through fear of hurting the love of her governess that she refrained from asking: "Do you think I shall be able to go to school soon?" Miss Carrell read these stories very well, for, to tell the truth, she was as interested in them as her pupils; it was as much as she could do to restrain herself from pursuing the career of Winifred or the Tomboy after the children had gone to bed. Owen, also, though he said little, was more interested in the tales than was proper for one of his sex.

At length, hand-in-hand with assurances of unfailing affection, Daphne introduced the proposition that she go to school soon. She would write every week to Miss Carrell full details of her adventures. And Owen would go to his prep, school, and they would be able to compare notes.

This enthusiasm for going to school was unintelligible to Owen, who secretly dreaded his first visit, but he pretended to be as excited as she.

"You'll have to ask your papa," Miss Carrell replied. "I don't think he'll like it. You're too young. Besides, schools--boarding-schools are expensive."

"Oh, but father's got lots of money."

"His expenses are very heavy."

"Yes, but I shall have to go to school one day. And I'm just on twelve."

"I believe you want to get rid of me. I believe you're tired of me. You're ashamed of being taught by a governess."

Indignantly Daphne protested, but Miss Carrell continued: "Well, well, I suppose it is humiliating for a child of eleven to be tied to the strings of a governess." And she knew she had successfully bedded out that idea.

The same evening Mr. Bruno's study was entered by his daughter, who, guessing from his position in the armchair, with book and spectacles, that no more than three minutes would be allotted her, came straight to the point.

"Please, daddy, may I go to school?"

"To school? Why, you're not yet out of your cradle."

"Don't be silly. I'm in my twelfth year."

"So? Well, what school are you going to?"

"Oh, I don't know. Some school."

"Well, there's an excellent school, financed by the government, in Star Lane. You could go there, I suppose. I noticed the other day that there was an Infants' Entrance."

"Oh, but father," protested Daphne. "That's only for district children. I mean a proper school--a boarding-school. For _ladies'_ children."

"But, gracious lady, art thou the daughter of an earl's castle? I'll tell you what you are. You're just the encumbrance of a public entertainer, who has, so to speak, to drag you round in a box by the side of his barrel organ. Even so, aren't you being taught by an excellent governess?"

"Yes, but no one in double figures has a governess."

"No one in double figures has a governess? Translate, for a dull mind."

"No one eleven years old has a governess. Did you?"

"Ah, did I? 'Twere well, were you brought up as I. The rod, my child, frequently and soundly applied."

Daphne, for a response, smiled delightedly.

"What does the excellent Carrell say?" asked Mr. Bruno.

"Of course, she doesn't want me to go, as she'd lose me----"

"Upon my soul!" began Mr. Bruno.

"But she said I might ask you and"--here Daphne, who had come and leaned forward against the arm of his chair, drooped her head in an acted sulk--"she said you wouldn't agree."

"Did she though?"

"She said you couldn't afford it, but I told her that was all my hat."

"All your what?"

"All piffle."

"If there's a school, Miss Billingsgate, where they teach seemliness and decorum, and such a modicum of English as will enable you to get through society without expulsion, I think it had best be looked for immediately."

"Well, when may I go?"

"I don't know. Not to-night, certainly. It's already approaching six o'clock. Which reminds me that 'the clock upbraids me with a waste of time.' You'd better let me get on with my work, especially if I'm to pay all this new money for your education.... Good night, Duffy dear. Go and get into your cradle."

The next morning, as he was crossing the first-floor landing to the door of his study, he saw Miss Carrell coming downstairs, and remembered his conversation with Daphne. Keeping hold of his door-handle, as a sort of insurance policy against protracted talk, he asked:

"I suppose you've heard of my daughter's latest freak? School?"

"Yes, she's always harping on it."

"Is she? Good gracious! Why, it was but yesterday that we had to be thinking about getting her a governess." He had almost forgotten that the important little person before him was the governess in question. "Her wedding will be upon us before we've folded up her swaddling clothes.... However.... School. Do you think she ought to go? At what age do girls go? Of girls I profess to know nothing, except that, speaking generally, they are a great ornament to the world. Do you think she ought to go?"

Miss Carrell shook her head and lifted her shoulders.

"_I_ don't want to lose her, but sometimes I think that with her vital nature she ought to have more of the society of girls like herself. My Latin, for instance, is poor."

"Mensa-mensa-mensam," began Mr. Bruno helpfully. "But how does one find a really good girls' school, and go and examine it?"

Miss Carrell's head went slightly on one side.

"Of course, I know a good deal about the scholastic world, having been a mistress myself."

"No; is that so? I didn't know that, or I had forgotten it. This is exceedingly useful. Tell me some more about suitable schools."

"Of course, I know best the school where I taught for three years. Hemans House."

"If it's named after Mrs. Hemans, I've no opinion of the poetess--

The boy, oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea!

No, we can't send her to a place named after Mrs. Hemans."

"I rather fancy it was. But Miss Vidella is old-fashioned. I expect to your thinking she'd be a very antiquated type. There's nothing the least bit modern about Hemans House. It's a very strict, and I suppose you'd say a very prudish place."

"Not at all, not at all." It is a quality of incisive minds that they must ever brief themselves for the opposite of what has just been said. "I'm more than ever convinced that all children, girls especially, should have a course of old fashions before they begin to be modern. Christian ethics, after all, are an extraordinarily good system on which to run your life, and the modesty of our grandmothers is a necessary base for later liberties. Yes, I've given the subject considerable thought. Childhood should be a time of very vigilant restraint. They must be pruned, so as to make less gay blossoms and more wood. Then, well rooted, they can blossom as they fancy."

Mr. Bruno had paid the exceptional Miss Carrell's intellect the compliment of thinking she understood him; but he was quite wrong--Miss Carrell, by his second sentence, had retired from further understanding, and was allowing her mind to fill with a new scheme. When he had finished, she said, "Yes, of course."

"And where is this Miss Vidella's school?"

"Windsor."

"Then at any rate she has some unimpeachable neighbours.... And, from your three years' experience, do you really think it is a good school? A good place for Daphne?"

Miss Carrell appeared to deliberate before she replied.

"Of an old-fashioned kind, yes.... Yes, I think _certainly_. It is purposely limited to a few girls, because Miss Vidella, though strict, likes to mother each individual girl."

"I see. Vidella is an extraordinary name. Was she born with it, or is it a _nom de guerre_?"

Miss Carrell said she didn't know.

"I should think it's a trade-mark," suggested Mr. Bruno. "Prima donnas and ballerinas and hat-makers adopt names like that, don't they?"

Miss Carrell said it was just the sort of quaint thing Miss Vidella would do. "She's a personality, if ever there was one."

"Is she? Well, you want a personality at the head of a school. We must think this over...." He turned the handle of his door. "Meantime, work calls. You must think it over, too."

Miss Carrell did think it over. She had started to think it over before his door opened. And now she continued her journey downstairs but slowly, stopping at times to examine the idea again. She unconsciously nodded to herself. Yes, she knew that little stout Miss Vidella through and through. It would be a pretty piece of work, and rather satisfying to one's vanity.

When next Miss Carrell had a day to herself, she dressed in her latest-bought costume for the confounding of her old employer, and took the train to Windsor.

Leaving the station, she passed the castle on her left hand, and, descending the hill, walked to the outskirts of the town. It was wonderfully pleasant to follow these familiar streets, thinking how her position had improved since the days when she used to tread-mill them regularly behind a crocodile of garrulous young girls. A narrow, stringy life, a young mistress's in a school like Hemans House! How she had envied, though vanity had hardly admitted it, the visiting parents to whom Miss Vidella would show such consideration! And now she was approaching the place almost like a parent herself. No suitor for employment, but a prospective employer of the odious little Miss Vidella. There was something very near glee in the thought.

It was a long walk, but at least she saw the high, grey wall, of about eighty foot frontage, that screened from sight the lower floors of Hemans House, seeming always to intervene between the charges of Miss Vidella and the immodesties of the world. At either end were tall carriage doors painted green, but dust-coloured and spattered in their lower halves, where the assoilings of the world's highway beat against the sequestered school. These carriage doors were termini--as Miss Carrell so well knew and soon saw again--of a bow-shaped drive that encompassed a darkened haunt of trees and shrubs. The gravel, moss-green at the gutters but clean at the crown, suggested that nowadays it knew feet more than wheels--like a lady who has once belonged to the carriage folk but has had losses and must now be content with an occasional cab. The house, before which its arc swept, was wide, flat-fronted, flat-roofed, and, as one suspected after seeing the garden wall, faced with a greying stucco. Its windows were curtained with the simplicity of dormitories and class-rooms. The drive broke from its bow-sweep for a space to touch the bottom of the dead-white hearth-stoned steps. These brought one to a hall door painted the same green as the doors in the garden wall, but scrupulously washed; indeed, at this door, with its brilliant brass knocker, letter-box and bell, one seemed to be in real touch, for the first time, with the niceties of Miss Vidella.

Conscious of her new quality, Miss Carrell ascended the steps. In the past and pitiable years she had always been obliged to enter the house through the pupils' entrance at the side, for only parents or visitors might defile the hearth-stoned steps. She rang the bell and knocked a confident ratter-tat-_tat_; and, while waiting, peeped through the two lights of leaded and coloured glass to see the old familiar hall, now in a dull green, now in a sickening blue. Here came a maid. Miss Carrell turned her head and looked towards the shrubbery. The door opening showed the maid in a black dress, neat apron, and cap with streamers--in fact, just as presentable as the brass knocker. Yes, Miss Vidella was at home, and what was the name, please?

"Miss Carrell. She will know me."

Miss Carrell did not say, "I was once a mistress here," because she remembered how the servants had always despised the mistresses. "And how could they do anything else," thought she, as she stepped in, "knowing that the governesses were paid but ten pounds a year more than themselves, and fed no better?"

The old familiar hall! The same well-polished linoleum, narrow mahogany table pushed against the heavy red-and-gold wall-paper; the same two mahogany chairs; the same hat and coat stand, jealously guarded from hats and coats; the same comparative darkness and inalienable odour; the same hum of voices from the class-rooms; and the same sound--which, to be sure, she had forgotten for years, but was a necessary ingredient--of a pupil playing scales in one of the music-rooms on the first floor.

She was imagining the mistresses in class-room or music-room, and feeling sorry for them, as she followed the maid into Miss Vidella's reception room. So familiar! this congregation of mahogany pieces and knick-knacks with a display of antimacassars over the backs of armchairs. There was the upright piano which would be used for practice when no guests were in the room. On all the tables, on the top of the piano, and along the mantel-shelf were cabinet portraits, in assorted frames, of girls who had left; and all these photographs stood parallel, but obliquely, as if they had once stood shoulder to shoulder, but had heard the command, "Half left turn!" Miss Carrell studied the pictures of girls she had known, many of which bore signatures such as "Grace," or "Your affectionate pupil, Dorothy Brewer," or "To dear Miss Vidella, from her affectionate Violet."

"Miss Vidella says she's engaged for a few minutes, but will not keep you waiting long."

Yes. That would be the message she would send to an ex-mistress. Miss Carrell walked to the window and looked out. She could re-create what had happened when the maid announced "Miss Carrell." "Who? Miss Carrell? Miss Carrell? Dear me. Well, ask her--tell her I will not keep her waiting long." She could hardly be expected to come expeditiously to a person whom once she had employed at a salary of thirty pounds a year. And actually it was a full five minutes before Miss Vidella was heard approaching. Even then she delayed in the hall, while her high-pitched and affected voice whined some instructions to a passing pupil.

The door opened, and unsmiling and deliberate, Miss Vidella sailed towards her late governess. Miss Vidella was short and very stout, and her dress was black, from the collar at her ears to the end of the skirt, which seemed lifted by the dome of her hips some irregular inches off the ground. Her hair was as black as her dress, and mercilessly parted in its middle, probably to complete the resemblance to an ancestral portrait; but the fat face, with its steel spectacles on a nose that did not appear to have developed much since infancy, hardly matched the dignity of her walk or the queenly attitude she assumed in her chair.

"Ah, Miss Carrell." Not for twenty years, one imagined, had the inflexions of Miss Vidella's voice been true and natural; they were always taken from a cupboard to suit her pose of the moment; she had a favourite one of injured surprise, which she supposed was very effective with her pupils and staff; another of quiet indomitability; and another of mirthless sarcasm. Her present voice was the voice of a patron conceding an audience. "I'm sure it's very kind of you to come. And where do you teach now?"

"I am no longer teaching. I--I manage a gentleman's household for him."

That a governess could rise out of her caste to something higher was not easily conceived by Miss Vidella.

"What? A housekeeper? Isn't that a pity? Surely the training of youth was a higher calling."

"I did not say 'housekeeper,' Miss Vidella. What I mean is, I manage a widower's household for him, and act as guardian of his children."

"But surely that means he's making you combine governess and housekeeper in one? I hope he is not taking advantage of you, and that you are not being overworked."

("Fat little beast," thought Miss Carrell. "You naturally don't want to think that I bettered myself by leaving you.") But while thinking this she said pleasantly:

"You don't quite understand the post, Miss Vidella. I must confess I consider myself very lucky, and I thought it would please you too. Mr. Tenter Bruno is a widower, and he has appointed me to the sole charge of his servants and his children. He gives me, in addition to a luxurious home, a hundred pounds a year."

As a tadpole might legitimately be called a frog, so her present eighty pounds, by virtue of its promise, might be called a hundred.

"A hundred pounds a year resident!" Miss Vidella's little black eyes at last showed amazement. "But surely that's an enormous salary for so young a woman, is it not?"

"It is very good, certainly."

"He must be a very wealthy man, this Mr.--Mr.----"

"Mr. Tenter Bruno."

"There is a writer of that name, is there not? Though I confess I have little acquaintance with any of these modern writers. They are so revolutionary, and their writings have a distinctly immoral tone. Shelley and Keats, of course, I am passionately fond of. Is your Mr. Tenter Bruno of the same family as the writer?"

"He is _the_ Mr. Tenter Bruno."

"_Indeed?_"

It was clear that Miss Vidella was giving some thought to this information, for she had looked again, and with a new expression, at the fine plumage of her late governess. If you brought together such notions as a loose modern writer, a pretty dependent, and the ridiculous remuneration of a hundred pounds a year----

"Indeed!" she said. "It's a curious appointment."

Miss Carrell smiled. She did not trouble to repudiate the suspicion, even feeling a humour to encourage it. Raising her shoulders, she replied:

"Perhaps all artists are unconventional."

There was a rustle in her hostess's chair.

"Unconventional theories, in my experience of the world, Miss Carrell, often end in--er--in all sorts of things." She began to enjoy playing the mentor on such a subject to the young woman. "Are you sure that you are quite wise in accepting such an equivocal position? Artists are so often loose-lived. You must forgive me, but this is the warning of an old woman."

A merry laugh was Miss Carrell's reply.

"Oh, I can look after myself all right. Why, I've been there over two years."

(Not, of course, on her present throne, but it was unnecessary to explain that.)

Miss Vidella bridled and shrugged. Obviously she was thinking that, if such were the position, the worst had probably happened. And in the face of this probability, Miss Carrell was no person to encourage in Hemans House.

"Well, I happened to be in the neighbourhood," said Miss Carrell, "and I couldn't resist inquiring after the old school. I hope it's prospering."

"Certainly," said Miss Vidella, slightly ruffled. "My school has never been more prosperous."

"The numbers keep up?"

"I do not desire too great numbers, for then each individual child receives greater attention from myself and my staff."

("Fiddlesticks!" thought her listener. "That stuff may go down with the parents, but what's the good of palming it off on me?")

"I would have asked you to stay to tea," said Miss Vidella, after a pause, "only I have hardly a minute to spare. I am really very busy indeed. I am afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse me."

Miss Carrell rose and picked up her umbrella from a chair. It was rather fun angling for this plump trout.

"All right--yes--I mustn't keep you. I don't think I'd better stay to tea, as I want to get to town early. There's just one thing I wanted to ask you, and it was this. The elder of my two charges is a girl, Daphne Bruno. She is about to go to school, and Mr. Bruno has commissioned me to find a suitable place for her. I thought you knew so much more about the scholastic world than I did, so as I was in the town it occurred to me to look in and ask you to advise us. Mr. Bruno would want a really first-class school, of course, and I don't suppose money would be a very great object."

"This is very interesting. Please sit down again, Miss Carrell." Miss Vidella sat down herself. "This is very interesting. Tell me about the little girl. The mention of her alone interests me, my life having been spent in the service of such as she. How old is she, and what is her name?"

"She's eleven, and her name is Daphne Deirdre."

"Such strange names!"

Miss Vidella said it in a voice she kept for parents, or for the girls when they used slang: it had a faint savour of mittens and quiet-handed surprise at anything less strictly regulated than herself.

"Yes," Miss Carrell agreed. "As you said, these people are unconventional. What school do you really think would suit the daughter of such a man? Of course, to modern parents the very possession of his daughter would be an advertisement for the school."

"Miss Carrell, why should she not come here? I am fairly full, as I intimated, but I could make an exception for such a child, in the hope, of course, that she would inherit her father's talents and bring great credit to the school. And for your sake, too, as an old member of the staff."

It was a demurring answer that Miss Carrell gave to this.

"I had hardly thought of that. Of course, she'd do credit to any school. She has a clear, inquisitive brain and a tremendous vitality that she gets from her father, and at the same time a soft and adoring side that I suppose comes from the mother, who seems to have been a frail, affectionate creature. Altogether a charming child. But I don't think it would do. I expect that Mr. Bruno contemplates paying much higher fees than you ask."

"We can always arrange our fees," began Miss Vidella, luckily seeing nothing of the laugh that trembled through her visitor. "I mean mine has always been a sliding scale, suited to the pockets of the parents. By which I have been able to help a lot of children of less well-to-do people."

"As far as I can remember, quite a lot of them came at reduced fees," said Miss Carrell in obliging agreement.

"Yes, I have made many sacrifices. It has been my work in life."

"Mr. Bruno is particularly anxious about the social status of the girls his daughter will meet."

"Of course. Naturally. Well, we shall satisfy him there. You know I make a point of receiving only the daughters of officers, clergy and professional men."

"Yes, I remember it says so in the prospectus." This reply particularly pleased Miss Carrell, for it would leave Miss Vidella wondering what exactly she meant. "I must admit the idea had not occurred to me, and frankly I don't think it would quite answer. Still, I'm grateful for your suggestion." She rose. "I must be hurrying, or I shall miss my train, and we have some guests to-night," which last statement was a fiction provided for atmospheric effect.

"Of course, you understand," said Miss Vidella hurriedly, and smiling to repudiate any false construction that might be put on her words, "that in the event of your sending me a good pupil I should save an agent's fee. I don't know if it----"

A laugh rippled from Miss Carrell.

"What an idea! Were you going to suggest that I receive it instead? Oh, yes, I remember you used to offer it to us. I shouldn't mind taking it at all, if by chance Daphne came to you. I have no false pride and make no bones of the fact that I earn my living. What fee do you usually give the agents?"

"Oh, they vary. But I really shouldn't mind offering you, in this case, if Mr. Bruno paid, say--say, a hundred a year, a commission of ten pounds. I should regard it as only fair."

"Well, that would be a pleasant little windfall, supposing Daphne did come here. Though you understand, of course, I must put the little girl's interest before all things."

"Naturally. Naturally. I would be the last person to suggest anything else. But, of course, I have such faith in my own methods that I don't think she would do better elsewhere. I feel I should like to have your little ward here. And it's only because you're an old friend of mine, and I knew your position, that I offered what I did."

"Oh, I think it was exceedingly sweet of you, Miss Vidella. And if Mr. Bruno decides to send his daughter here I shan't at all mind taking it. Well, we must see. It's quite a new idea to me. Good-bye."

If Miss Carrell, as she passed into the street, was faintly reminded of the sons of Jacob selling young Joseph to the Midianites for a few pieces of silver, she quickly forgot so silly a thought.